DONE DEAL: Dele completes transfer to Everton

There’s a lot I want to say right now, but there’s time for that later. For now, let’s just stick to the facts: Tottenham Hotspur and Everton have completed a deal that will send Dele to the Toffees on a permanent basis.

The deal is complicated and caused a great deal of consternation as information dribbled out on social media a few hours ago, but the gist of it is this: Everton can’t bring Dele in on loan, and they can’t afford a big transfer fee in the short term, so Spurs collaborated with them to set up some easily attainable metrics by which if Dele plays a lot and plays well, Spurs can receive as much as £40m over time when all is said and done.

Dele’s a player who seems like he might have fallen out of love with football a bit over the past few years. You can’t blame him. This is a chance for him to regain that love, maybe — a fresh start with a new team and a new manager (even if that manager is Frank Lampard). For his sake, I hope he crushes it there and regains that je ne sais quoi that made us all fall in love with him when he first arrived.

Dele will always be one of my favorite Tottenham Hotspur players, up there with Mousa Dembele, Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Erik Lamela, and Dimitar Berbatov. And it doesn’t matter that he’s now at a different club.

Godspeed, king.